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Tag Archives: Union with Christ

This morning I want to talk about finding Jesus. I suppose this might sound a little bit like trendy spiritualism or even like that old time religion, and it might be a little of both, but it is, nonetheless, one of the most basic issues in any Christian’s life. We not only have to seek after Jesus, but we have to lay hold of him. We have to grab Him and never let go. But there’s a bit of a twist to this.

You see, woven into the Apostle Paul’s message in this section of Philippians is the somewhat topsy-turvy point that you don’t actually find Jesus. He finds you. In fact, what you find is yourself as Jesus finds you. Indeed, you find yourself in Jesus as He layshold of you and brings you into the fellowship of suffering and conformity with his death. This is the mode of communion with God which we must all realize, and it is the necessary precursor to being able to obey Christ and walk according to His rule. Continue reading →

What does it take to keep people together? This question lies behind a good marriage, but it is also the key to deep and lasting friendships, as well as business ventures, political alliances, and even healthy and successful churches. What causes some folks to stick together and other folks to split up and go their own way? Sometimes people try to answer this with the general notion of “compatibility.” Some personalities just “click,” they might say. Others appeal to shared values. The answer is actually both more specific and more basic. The key to sticking together is having a shared desire, a larger goal which everyone wants to realize. It’s having the same mission.

But how do you get that? Now, that’s the really tricky question. It isn’t enough to take the desires we already have and then go look for others who happen to have the same ones and pair up with them. No, for Christians, we have to critically examine our desires and submit them to the mind of Christ. In fact, it’s even more extreme than this. We have to give up our own desires completely. We have to surrender them to Jesus, along with our whole life, and we have to find our new life in Him, seeing His life in us and in those around us.

This all brings us to our sermon text today. The Apostle Paul says that “to live is Christ.” And he means just that—his life is for a purpose, the purpose of being like Christ and having Christ live in him. In fact, his life is not his own. It is Christ’s. This conviction is what drives his entire ministry, his sense of mission, and his philosophy for life in the church. It allows him to be content in the face of pressure, persecution, and suffering, and it gives him confidence to take pious risks, to rush into dangerous situations for the sake of the gospel. He knows that to die is gain, and so whatever life he lives must be the life of Christ. And so this is true for us as well today. Jesus calls all men unto Himself. He calls you to give up your life and follow Him. And for those of you who have placed your trust in Him, this means that your life is not your own. Your life is now Christ’s life. Continue reading →

The conceptof the lamed-vavnik comes froma certain school of mystical Judaism. Falsani explains its meaning and significance:

According to various kababalistic teachings, at any given time in history there are thirty-six righteous people (lamed-vavniks take their name from the Hebrew letters lamed— meaning “thirty”– and vav— “six”) on whom the fate of the world rests. If even one of them were to perish, God would destroy the world. The lamed-vavniks–also known as menschen in Yiddish– don’t know the identity of one another and in fact don’t even know that they themselves are counted among the righteous thirty-six. Sometimes the lamed-vavniks appear to be humble fools– slackers or burnouts, in the parlance of our time– but the rest of us should take heed. We never know when we might meet one of the thirty-six, so we should treat everyone as if the fate of the world rests on their unassuming shoulders. (110)